The Sunday Philosophy Club

IN SPITE OF THE FACT that he had drunk three glasses of wine and Isabel was towards the end of her second, Jamie had at first been doubtful about Isabel’s proposition, but she had won him over, wheedling him, persuading him that they should at least give it a try.

To do what? To go to see Paul Hogg, of course, as the first step in finding out what it was that Mark Fraser had discovered, and about whom he had discovered it. Sitting at the kitchen table, the chanterelle omelette consumed, Jamie had listened intently as she explained to him about the conversation with Neil, and about how she felt that she could not ignore what he had revealed. She wanted to take the matter further, but she did not want to do it by herself. It would be safer, she said, with two, although the nature of the danger, if any, was not expanded upon.

At last Jamie had agreed. “If you insist,” he said. “If you really insist, I’m prepared to go with you. But it’s only because I don’t want you charging off into this by yourself. It’s not because I think it’s a good idea.”

As Isabel saw Jamie out of the house later that evening, they had agreed that she would telephone him at some point in the 1 3 6

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h next few days, to discuss how they were to proceed with Paul Hogg. At least she had an acquaintanceship with him, which would enable them to seek him out. But exactly how this would be done, and on what pretext, remained to be worked out.

Barely had Jamie left the house than a thought occurred to Isabel. It almost sent her running after him to tell him about it, but she desisted. It was not all that late, and several neighbours walked their dogs along the street at that hour. She did not wish to be seen running after young men, in the street at least (though the metaphorical context would be as bad). That was not a situation in which anybody would wish to be seen, in much the same way as Dorothy Parker had pronounced that she would not wish to be caught, stuck at the hips, while climbing through anybody else’s window. She smiled at the thought. What was so funny about this? It was difficult to explain, but it just was. Perhaps it was the fact that somebody who would never climb through a window nonetheless expressed a view on the possibility of climbing through a window. But why was that amusing? Perhaps there was no explanation, just as there was no rationale for the intense humour of the remark she had once heard at a lecture given by Domenica Legge, a great authority on Anglo-Norman history. Professor Legge had said: “We must remember that the nobles of the time did not blow their noses in quite the way in which we blow our own noses: they had no handkerchiefs. ” This had been greeted with peals of laughter, and she still found it painfully amusing. But there was really nothing funny about it at all. It was a serious business, no doubt, having no handkerchiefs; mundane, certainly, but serious nonetheless. (What did the nobles do, then? The answer was, apparently, straw. How awful. How scratchy. And if the nobles were reduced to using straw, then what did those beneath them in the social order use? The answer was, of course, vivid: they blew T H E S U N D A Y P H I L O S O P H Y C L U B

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their nose on their fingers, as many people still did. She had seen it herself once or twice, though not in Edinburgh, of course.) It was not of handkerchiefs, or the lack of handkerchiefs, that she thought, but of Elizabeth Blackadder. Paul Hogg had bought the Blackadder which she had wanted. The exhibition at which he had bought it was a short one, and those who had bought paintings would by now have been allowed to remove them. This meant that anybody who wanted a further look at the painting would have to do so in Paul Hogg’s flat in Great King Street. She could be just such a person. She could telephone Paul Hogg and ask to see the painting again, as she was thinking of asking Elizabeth Blackadder, who still had her studio in the Grange, to paint a similar picture for her. This was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. An artist might not wish to make a mere copy of an existing work, but might be quite willing to do something similar.

A lie, she thought, but only a lie at this stage of the plan’s conception; lies can become truths. She had indeed planned to buy a Blackadder and there was no reason why she should not commission one. In fact, she would do exactly that, which meant that she could see Paul Hogg on these grounds with a perfectly good conscience. Not even Sissela Bok, author of Lying, could object. Then, having examined the Blackadder again, which he would be proudly displaying on his wall, she would delicately raise the possibility that Mark Fraser might have found out something awkward in the course of his work at McDowell’s. Would Paul Hogg have any idea of what that might be? And if he did not, then she might be more specific and say to him that if he was attached to the young man—and he clearly had been fond of him, judging from his emotional reaction to what she had said in the Vincent Bar—then might he not be prepared to make some enquiries so as to prove or disprove the worrying hypothesis that 1 3 8

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h all of this seemed to be pointing towards? It would have to be handled delicately, but it could be done. He might agree. And all the time, just to give her confidence, Jamie would be sitting beside her on Paul Hogg’s chintzy sofa. We think, she could say; we wonder. That sounded much more reasonable than the same thing expressed in the singular.

She telephoned Jamie the next morning at the earliest decent hour; nine o’clock, in her view. Isabel observed an etiquette of the telephone: a call before eight in the morning was an emergency; between eight and nine it was an intrusion; thereafter calls could be made until ten in the evening, although anything after nine-thirty required an apology for the disturbance. After ten one was into emergency time again. On answering the telephone one should, if at all possible, give one’s name, but only after saying good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. None of these conventions, she conceded, was observed to any great extent by others, and not, she noted, by Jamie himself, who answered her call that morning with an abrupt “Yes.”

“You don’t sound very welcoming,” said Isabel disapprovingly.

“And how do I know who you are? ‘Yes’ is not enough. And if you had been too busy to take the call, would you simply have said ‘No’?”

“Isabel?” he said.

“Had you told me who you were, then I would have reciprocated the courtesy. Your last question would then have been otiose.”

Jamie laughed. “How long is this going to take?” he asked. “I have to get a train to Glasgow at ten. We’re rehearsing for Parsifal. ”

“Poor you,” said Isabel. “Poor singers. What an endurance test.”

“Yes,” Jamie agreed. “Wagner makes my head sore. But I really must get ready.”

Isabel quickly explained her idea to him and then waited for his reaction.

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